28 Years Later (2025)

Movie · 2025 · Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction · 1h 55m · R · English

Curator score: 5.1/10 (1.5M ratings)

Time didn't heal anything.

Overview

Twenty-eight years after the Rage virus outbreak, a heavily-defended island survives connected to the mainland by a single causeway. When one of the group leaves the island into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.

Ratings

Director

Danny Boyle

Production

Columbia Pictures, DNA Films, Decibel Films, TSG Entertainment

Cast

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, Jack O'Connell, Chi Lewis-Parry, Edvin Ryding, Christopher Fulford, Stella Gonet, Kim Allan, Sandy Batchelor, Geoffrey Newland, Joe Blakemore, Celi Crossland, Robert Rhodes, Erin Kellyman, Sam Locke, Maura Bird, Ghazi Al Ruffai, Emma Laird

Where to watch

Netflix

Curator Review

Verdict

A bold, uneven return to the Rage-virus world: tense, inventive, and occasionally beautiful, but also tonally jagged and more interested in family drama, myth, and strange detours than straightforward survival horror. If you like ambitious genre sequels that swing hard, it’s worth a watch; if you want a clean, relentless zombie thriller, this may frustrate you.

Best for

  • fans of post-apocalyptic horror with emotional or philosophical detours
  • viewers who like experimental editing and tonal risk-taking
  • people interested in British survival stories and ruined-world atmosphere
  • audiences open to horror that blends action, drama, and bleak humor

Skip if

  • you want a tight, conventional zombie movie
  • you dislike abrupt tonal shifts or odd structural choices
  • you mainly want nonstop gore and chase scenes
  • you prefer sequels that closely replicate the original's style

Overview

Twenty-eight years on, the franchise still knows how to make a landscape feel haunted. The island-and-mainland setup gives the film a strong survival premise, and when it leans into dread, movement, and the physicality of the infected, it can be genuinely gripping. There’s also a welcome willingness to get strange, which keeps it from feeling like a routine legacy sequel.

Worth noting

But that same willingness to wander is the movie’s biggest liability. It often feels less like a pure horror sequel than a fractured mix of apocalypse movie, family drama, and eerie fable, with some abrupt shifts in tone and rhythm. For some viewers that will read as daring; for others, as disjointed.

Bottom line

The result is a film that’s easy to admire more than to fully embrace. It has enough atmosphere, ideas, and visual force to recommend to genre fans, especially those who like their horror messy and ambitious. Just don’t expect a simple return to the earlier films’ lean, feral urgency.

Top Letterboxd reviews

Lenny (3★) · 24986 likes

Ralph Fiennes is so damn orange in this film, I thought he was the fucking Lorax.

timtamtitus (3★) · 21359 likes

starting to think the virus has Viagra in it

David Sims (4.5★) · 12489 likes

third act Finnes never misses

Jake (3.5★) · 12141 likes

british people be like: zombie bit me arse

zoë rose bryant (5★) · 11852 likes

the children i teach each and every week were all born between october 2019 and march 2020. they spent their first year of life isolated from the rest of the world as a result of a nearly unprecedented pandemic that completely upended every aspect of modern society. said world they’ve grown up in since is radically different from the one any of us knew as children - one they’ll never have any knowledge of. and though most are only a… more the children i teach each and every week were all born between october 2019 and march 2020. they spent their first year of life isolated from the rest of the world as a result of a nearly unprecedented pandemic that completely upended every aspect of modern society. said world they’ve grown up in since is radically different from the one any of us knew as children - one they’ll never have any knowledge of. and though most are only a… more

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Topics

post-apocalyptic horror, survival thriller, infected outbreak, bleak atmosphere, family drama, British cinema, dystopian future, tonal experimentation, body horror, science fiction horror

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